


Cold Comforts

by HaxanHexes (PineNeedles)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Gen, Insomnia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Addiction, Spiderbyte
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 02:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13801434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineNeedles/pseuds/HaxanHexes
Summary: “What are you feeling? You can’t sleep. You have more… luxury with emotion. I suppose I’m curious.”“Just bad dreams,” Olivia says quietly.“What do they make you feel?” Amélie asks, fingers lazily tracing the implants on the back of Olivia’s head.Olivia goes silent. She wonders if she can even share that much. It feels so ridiculous now. The girl she was is supposed to be gone, Sombra replacing her, but that girl comes back at night like a restless ghost. And then, once again, Sombra just feels like… Olivia.“Scared,” she finally says. “Alone.” It’s easier when she can’t see Amélie, or the woman’s sallow eyes. It’s easier in the shadows.Amélie’s next breath is shuddering. “I understand.” A simple statement, but the closest the two ever get to empathizing with each other. It means something to Olivia, in this twisted entanglement they’ve wrapped themselves in. It helps still her tremors, even if it doesn’t end them.Sombra's much needed sleep is interrupted, because certain ghosts are difficult to put to rest. She seeks out comfort from Widowmaker, knowing the sniper is just as haunted as she is.





	Cold Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> Vent fic written in the early morning on a night when I couldn't sleep. Thanks to the support of my friends and readers, and to my dear Hashka for giving it a proofread.
> 
> This fic is operating under the assumption that "Olivia Colomar" is Sombra's real name.

There are times when Olivia feels it in her fingertips. It buzzes through her like it’s alive, or like her entire body is some impossibly complex circuit; as if, were she broken down, she’d just be a motherboard, or the power grid to some inscrutably constructed city. It’s not just her hardware, either—the metal plating on her spine or the circuits running beneath her skin. She feels it humming in all her parts, organic and not, and she’s felt it humming since she was a curious and lost young girl. 

But these days it’s louder. Stronger. She feels it in her fingertips and her fingertips begin to shake and shudder. She knows what it looks like, and that what it looks like is what it is, but she’d never stop for anything. When she’s hacking, she’s whole. It doesn’t matter if she’s parsing lines of code or tapping away at her holographic interface, when she’s solving puzzles and cracking locks everything feels right. 

Sometimes, it’s an out of body experience. She feels like _she’s_ code, a complex configuration of binary. She feels she’s as infinite and free and powerful as the information in which she deals. Being in her body has been difficult for a long, long time. That’s why, even if it makes the Hum stronger, she’s proud of its modifications. She’s proud of her hardware, and her tattoos and piercings, and her hair style, and the way she does her makeup, because it makes her body feel livable. It makes her body, more than ever, feel almost like home. 

It makes her beautiful. Certain others, apparently, agree.

She presses her palms into her eyes and balls her hands into tight fists, but the pressure isn’t enough to relieve the tremor in her hands or the discomfort in her eye sockets. She lets her arms fall to her sides, and slowly opens her eyes. It feels like a Herculean effort not to vomit right there, but breathing deeply, she manages to look around her room. Everything still feels a little swimmy and unreal. It’s not helped by the neon purple glow of the monitors she didn’t bother turning off before falling into bed. 

Her eyes focus enough to make out the time on the monitor, superimposed on the screen over her signature _calavera_ logo. She doesn’t remember exactly when she tore herself away from her work, but she must not have been asleep for more than thirty or forty minutes at most. She reaches for the mug of water by her bed, taking it in two shuddering hands and spilling a little on her already drenched sheets.

She knows that right now, the tremors aren’t _just_ the Hum. They’re her sleep deprivation, and how she forgets to eat, and most of all they’re the Dream and its abrupt ending. It feels like it ought to be rote, after so many years, but she still wakes up with a shallow gasp and a racing heart rate. She’s glad she’s never had the Dream the few times Guillard let her spend the night after their trysts. It would be too unbearably vulnerable.

She cranes her head up slightly, and brings the mug to her lips. She drinks, and spills water down her chin and on to her chest. She doesn’t feel ready to sit up, but she doesn’t mind the mess anyway. The cool water feels nice, washing away the sweat beading on her warm skin.

The Hum makes her want to get up, go to her monitors and get back to work, but she’s lived this life long enough to knows the results of not listening to her body when it says _STOP_. Sometimes she wishes she could be _all_ circuits and steel, so she’d never have to stop, but then she’d be like an Omnic, and…

Her mind’s eye starts playing back the dream, like some terrible projector, and she clenches her eyes closed as if that might stop it. Her nose fills with the scent of blood and ash, so strongly it makes her stomach wrench. She takes a deep breath and drinks more water, trying to pull her focus into her body, but she can’t help but hear the terrible rhythm of Siege Automaton E54 units in recon mode trudging over dirt and rubble.

It’s amazing how all it takes is a dream to erase twenty-five years of distance between her and a trauma she hasn’t verbally acknowledged in half a decade.

She forces herself up and out of bed, even as the Dream clings to her like heavy moss. Her steps are unsteady and her bare knees knock as she keys in the code to her door. When it opens, the bright light in the hall is almost enough to make her blackout, but she waits until her vision stops blurring and then carefully makes her way down the quiet facility halls.

There’s one comfort in her life besides hacking, one that makes her feel wonderfully present in her body, and that’s Guillard. Though Olivia is starting to think of her as just Amélie. There’s no tenderness in it beyond the pure creature comfort of company, but a comfort is a comfort. She’d worry about waking the woman up, but she does what she wants, and she knows the spider never sleeps.

 

“ _Araña_.” Olivia announces herself bluntly as she shuffles into Amélie’s room.

The woman looks up at her. “You look like shit, Sombra,” she says with a sneer. “And I don’t recall inviting you in.”

“Why do you even bother locking that thing?” Olivia says, pointing a thumb over her shoulder at the door. 

Amélie just sighs and looks away. “I suppose I like to pretend I’m still a person.” She’s naked, curled up in a mess of sheets, hair spilling in haphazard spools around her. Her light is on, and she clutches a picture frame in her hands, hugging it to her chest defensively.

Olivia isn’t quite sure why, but she likes that she gets to see Amélie like this—unkempt and messy, instead of the poised and perfect assassin. She likes that Amélie asked her to say “Guillard” and not “Lacroix,” like Ogundimu does. She likes that Amélie expressed a preference to her. 

Amélie’s expression shows no hint of emotion, but these moments feel oddly precious to Olivia. Each of them hides behind a mask, but at night and together, enough of _Sombra_ and _Widowmaker_ falls away for each to catch some glimpse of honesty in the other. It’s nowhere near the truth, but Olivia’s favourite truths are always fabricated. It may be ersatz, but it’s also special.

“Thought you were a weapon,” Olivia mumbles as she falls into bed without asking. Amélie doesn’t push her away, but doesn’t snuggle up either.

“What does that make you then,” Amélie asks, “a computer?” Without shifting her gaze, she sets the frame face down on her bedside table. Olivia doesn’t ask, and has never peeked, but she can guess. 

“Beep boop,” Olivia says, hearing the frayed edge of fatigue in her voice.

Amélie just rolls her eyes. “Come to bother me?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“And I suppose you want me to put you out of your misery?” Amélie asks. “Maybe I’ll fetch my rifle.”

“In a way, yeah,” Olivia says. Her tone is playful though tired, and the ghost of a smirk dances on her lips.

“I’m not in the mood,” is Amélie’s curt reply.

“Not like that,” Olivia says. She curls up in a ball as a shiver dances down her spine and through her legs. “‘Sides… Seems like you can’t sleep either, eh, _¿azul?_ ”

“I’ll hardly warm you up,” Amélie notes, but she begins to shift, making room for Olivia beside her. Their want for each other’s presence is grudging both ways, but much harder for Amélie than Olivia.

“I don’t wanna be warmed up,” Olivia says as she crawls beside her lover and burrows under the sheets. “I wanna be cooled down.”

Amélie sighs and wraps her arms around Olivia’s waist. “That I can do,” she murmurs.

They lie in silence for a while, and Olivia thinks she feels Amélie’s languid pulse through her cool skin. Something about Amélie’s touch brings Olivia a strange peace, not in spite of its chill, but for it.

“You’re always so warm,” Amélie whispers. It’s an observation void of judgment and emotion, spoken with the same indifference with which one might address the weather or the date.

“Didn’t I hear you telling O'Deorain you couldn’t feel anything...?” Olivia asks.

Amélie is silent in return.

“And what was all that stuff in Russia, about ‘I don’t even feel the cold’?”

“Your attempts at a French accent are quaint, Sombra,” Amélie replies. “I could ask you what that ‘ _stuff_ in Russia’ was with Volskaya, but my mother raised me with better manners.” Amélie digs her blunted nails into Olivia’s skin, a reminder that the spider can bite if she pleases, though the pressure stings less than the comment about mothers. 

But Amélie doesn’t know all that about Olivia, so she doesn’t make a fuss. She falls silent until Amélie’s grip eases. 

“Turn off the light,” Amélie commands.

Olivia flicks the switch, plunging the room into darkness. “You’re feeling things, though, hm?” Olivia asks after another silence passes between them.

Amélie is quiet again, as if weighing the risk and value of answering. “Mmm, a little,” she finally says in the dark. “Is it obvious?” They share these little bits of themselves, in the shadows, knowing that their mutually kept secrets will keep them safe.

“I only notice when we’re alone,” Olivia says. “You hide it well. You’re safe from O'Deorain, I think.”

Amélie lets out a wry little laugh. “Am I ever?”

“Guess not,” Olivia says. “You okay? With the stuff you’re feeling.”

“Do you care?” She asks so flatly it almost sounds like a statement rather than a question.

“Mmm.” Olivia isn’t sure if she does, so she hedges. “Maybe a little.”

“And that’s why you insisted on lending me your coat, hmm? When I visited…” Amélie trails off.

“It was snowing,” Olivia says firmly. “Didn’t want you catching cold.” That’s enough to elicit another little laugh from Amélie.

They grow quiet, each shifting slightly to find a comfortable position. Olivia rolls over so she can tuck her head into the crook of Amélie’s neck. It elicits a grumble from the assassin, but she just awkwardly places a hand on the back of Olivia’s head in her best affectation of care.

“And what about you?” Amélie asks. 

Olivia can feel the vibration in Amélie’s chest as she speaks, and wonders if Amélie feels anything like the Hum or the Dream that still has Olivia quaking beneath the sheets. She imagines Amélie does. Maybe the Hum for Amélie is an itchy trigger finger, that omnipresent craving for bloodshed that Talon worked into her. And she can imagine what Amélie’s Dream might be.

Not for the first time, Olivia muses silently over how Amélie feels like her mirror image. They’re so similar, but in certain ways wholly the opposites. Olivia certainly had more say than Amélie in ending up where she is. 

“What about me?” Olivia asks.

“What are you feeling? You can’t sleep. You have more… luxury with emotion. I suppose I’m curious.”

“Just bad dreams,” Olivia says quietly. 

“What do they make you feel?” Amélie asks, fingers lazily tracing the implants on the back of Olivia’s head.

Olivia goes silent. She wonders if she can even share that much. It feels so ridiculous now. The girl she was is supposed to be gone, Sombra replacing her, but that girl comes back at night like a restless ghost. And then, once again, Sombra just feels like… Olivia.

“Scared,” she finally says. “Alone.” It’s easier when she can’t see Amélie, or the woman’s sallow eyes. It’s easier in the shadows.

Amélie’s next breath is shuddering. “I understand.” A simple statement, but the closest the two ever get to empathizing with each other. It means something to Olivia, in this twisted entanglement they’ve wrapped themselves in. It helps still her tremors, even if it doesn’t end them.

They both go quiet again, having run out of thoughts or at least the words to meaningfully express them. Slowly but surely, Olivia’s shuddering starts to wane, and she feels pleasantly present in her body. The Hum gets quieter, and the Dream stops engulfing her like a miasma. 

Amélie hugs Olivia closer, and Olivia can’t be sure it’s an attempt at comfort or merely Amélie trying to hold the one warm thing in her life just that much nearer. She doesn’t care which it is. 

“ _Muchas gracias, amiga_ ,” Olivia murmurs as she begins to drift off.

Amélie hums and then kisses Olivia’s forehead. “ _De rien, mon amie_.”

In the still blackness, Olivia drifts off to sleep, Amélie’s presence fading into a fuzzy intimation. Darkness wraps up her consciousness as it had wrapped up the room. And mercifully, her sleep is dreamless.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this piece, then check me out on [tumblr](https://galpalico.tumblr.com/tagged/yasha%20writes).


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